After two decades and counting, Procter & Gamble is still trying to exorcise Satanism tales.

IT will apparently take an act of God for the Procter & Gamble Company to kill persistent tales that its trademark and its executives are linked to Satanism.

The stories have spread for more than 20 years, making Procter & Gamble the object of boycotts and resulting in thousands of consumer inquiries about whether its executives worship the Devil.

In the latest example of its protracted effort to fight back, the company is suing the Amway Corporation and 11 of its distributors, accusing them of making disparaging remarks about Procter products and spreading the stories about Satanism in an effort to lure customers to Amway. The suit accuses the defendants of unfair competition, fraud and violation of anti-racketeering laws. In response, Amway says Procter is simply bullying a growing competitor and has engaged in a false public relations campaign of its own.

Still, Procter's inability to end the stories underscores how difficult it can be for a company to protect its reputation, even if it is the world's largest consumer products company and has enormous marketing, advertising and legal resources. And while the company has been unable to identify the original source of the tales, the aggressive approach it takes to try to squelch them may be part of the reason they persist.

''Why P.& G. would choose to give this kind of rumor additional visibility is beyond me,'' said Clive Chajet, of Chajet Consultancy in New York, which advises companies on corporate and brand identity issues. ''By not ignoring it, what they do is make more people aware of it.''

But Procter, a $35 billion company that takes as much care with its identity as it does with its soap advertising, says the tales, which first began to circulate in the early 1980's, cannot simply be brushed aside.

''We are just firmly committed to this,'' said Elaine Plummer, a spokeswoman for P.& G. ''This involves our company's reputation and loss of business. We know consumers around the world have been diverted from buying our products.''

The stories typically contend that Procter executives have appeared on talk shows to ''come out'' in support of Satanism and that the moon-and-stars trademark of the company -- which is no longer used on its products -- contains the numbers 666, which some people believe is a sign of the Devil.

Of course none of this is true, and the company has spent millions of dollars to try to convince the public of that. Yet consumer inquiries -- about 200,000 to date -- continue to pour in to the company's headquarters in Cincinnati from as far away as Africa and Europe.

Procter has enlisted any number of legal and marketing strategies to try to stop the spread of the stories. Company representatives have even shown up at churches to try to set the record straight, and the company once considered suing a group of nuns that it discovered had been circulating the misinformation to students through fliers.

''We decided it wasn't going to look good to start suing Catholic nuns,'' said one person who worked on the matter for several years for the company. The nuns eventually agreed to send new fliers home with their students correcting the earlier one, he said.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Referring to the growing network through which the tales are spread -- from the informal grapevine to the Internet -- this person said, ''It is more of a nuisance than a major league problem.''

''There was a period of time when we didn't file any lawsuits and the rumors seemed to ebb and flow,'' he continued. ''It did seem to grow greater when it was ignored until the cold, hard reality of lawsuits got slapped on a few folks.''

The company has, in fact, won several judgments against people found to have spread the stories. In one case, a court ordered two Amway distributors, a married couple from Topeka, Kan., to pay Procter $75,000 in damages.

In all, the company has filed seven lawsuits against Amway distributors over the years; two of the suits name Amway itself as a defendant. Amway, which is based in Ada, Mich., is a $6.8 billion direct-marketing company whose products compete with Procter brands, which include Tide detergent and Crest toothpaste.

''The satanic message was disseminated by Amway distributors again in 1995 on a massive scale in different forms and by different media,'' Procter said in its latest complaint, filed in Federal court in Houston. The complaint says Amway representatives have told consumers that Procter's products are harmful and ineffective. For instance, it says distributors called Tide an ineffective detergent that forms sludge that clogs drain pipes and causes washing machines to rust.

Amway said in a statement, ''P.& G.'s recent lawsuit against Amway Corporation appears to be a reaction to an adverse decision in its earlier filed suit in Utah.'' In that case, Amway said, a Federal court this month dismissed an amended complaint by Procter against Amway and six of its distributors. But other complaints are pending, including another case in Utah that is expected to go to trial next year.

Amway also said that the contentions that its distributors had made disparaging remarks about Tide and other Procter products stemmed from incidents that occurred years ago; in those incidents, it said, distributors were told not to repeat such remarks about Procter. Amway added that it had filed counterclaims accusing Procter of ''abuse of the legal process and its publication of false and misleading press releases.''

Whether Procter's latest lawsuit will be any more successful than past efforts to protect the Ivory-pure image that the company works so hard to project is an open question.

''We've been trying to get these deceptive practices to end for years,'' said Ms. Plummer, the P.& G. spokeswoman. ''This case is the same in the sense that we want it to stop.''

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on July 29, 1997, on Page D00007 of the National edition with the headline: After two decades and counting, Procter & Gamble is still trying to exorcise Satanism tales. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe